Mourning What We Thought We Were by Frank Bidart

Mourning What We Thought We Were

We were born into an amazing experiment.

At least we thought we were. We knew there was no

escaping human nature: my grandmother

taught me that: my own pitiless nature

taught me that: but we exist inside an order, I

thought, of which history

is the mere shadow—

-

Every serious work of art about America has the same

theme: America

is a great Idea: the reality leaves something to be desired.

Bakersfield. Marian Anderson, the first great black classical

contralto, whom the Daughters of the American Revolution

would not allow to sing in an unsegregated

Constitution Hall, who then was asked by Eleanor

Roosevelt to sing at the Lincoln Memorial before thousands

was refused a room at the Padre Hotel, Bakersfield.

My mother’s disgust

as she told me this. It confirmed her judgment about

what she never could escape, where she lived out her life.

My grandmother’s fury when, at the age of seven or

eight, I had eaten at the home of a black friend.

The forced camps at the end of The Grapes of Wrath

were outside

Bakersfield. When I was a kid, Okie

was still a common

term of casual derision and contempt.

-

So it was up to us, born

in Bakersfield, to carve a new history

of which history is the mere shadow—

-

To further the history of the spirit is our work:

therefore thank you, Lord

Whose Bounty Proceeds by Paradox,

for showing us we have failed to change.

-

Dark night, December 1st 2016.

White supremacists, once again in

America, are acceptable, respectable. America!

Bakersfield was first swamp, then

desert. We are sons of the desert

who cultivate the top half-inch of soil.